Category: Woo Fighting

Homoeopathy, it’s a load of crap. Oh, there are a couple of other ways to say that but it comes down to the same thing. Horse shit or magic vibrations, doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t work. Believe it does work? Then make a million US dollars by proving to James Randi and the world that it does. Or… don’t bother with a million bucks because selling the shit is making you way more.

Those two wretched words are “faith” and “homeopathy”. Please go kill it. Kill it, then burn it, then piss on the ashes, then use the ashes to fertilize a field and grow a tall stand of grass, then burn that, and then use the field as a fecal lagoon where you toss the waste from raising pigs, which you turn into bacon, thereby salvaging something useful from it.

How I laugh. That’s why PZ Myers is high up on the list of people I’d like to meet! He is filled with so much awesome that often some of that awesome spills onto his keyboard and produces treasures like the quote above.

Like this:

I have, recently, received the greatest honour from… somebody. Looks to be Christopher Maloney but who actually knows. Or cares, really.

I have been promoted to “The Dirty Dozen”, a minion, nay, a TOP minion of PZ Myers. You see, PZ Myers literally has MILLIONS of minions and for somebody (even a quack like Christopher Maloney, or even a stranger quack purporting to be Christopher Maloney) to recognise me as one of the TOP 12 minions is a singular honour.

I just want to take this time to thank my parents, without whom I would never have been able to achieve this honour. And I would like to thank my team and especially the crowd from #pharyngula who have made all of this possible. I would like to thank my lovely wife, whose support and assistance during this time has made all of this possible. And thank you all, for your loyal support. And last, but not least, I would like to thank Dr. PZ Myers. Without his inspiration and mentoring, I would surely never have been able to win this award. Thank you.

I must say, I really do appreciate the traffic Chris, since I have a small blog, even a couple extra views make a lot of difference. Thank you very much for the honourable mention.

Now, since I’m a top 12 minion, if only I could manage to convince The Right Honourable PZ Myers Baron Pharyngula to link to my blog. He is after all a hard master to please.

I have just purchased a packet of Boots-brand 84 arnica homeopathic 30C Pills for £5.09, which Boots proudly claim is only 6.1p per pill. Their in-store advice tells me that arnica is good for treating “bruising and injuries”, which gives the impression that this is a very cost-effective health-care option.

Unlike most medication, it didn’t list the actual dose of the active ingredient that each pill contains, so I checked the British Homeopathic Association website. On their website it nonchalantly states that to make a homeopathic remedy, they start with the active ingredient and then proceed to dilute it to 1 per cent concentration. Then they dilute that new solution again, so there is now only 0.01 per cent of the original ingredients. For my 30C pills this diluting is repeated thirty times, which means that the arnica is one part in a million billion billion billion billion billion billion.

The arnica is diluted so much that there is only one molecule of it per 7 million billion billion billion billion pills.

It’s hard to comprehend numbers that large. If you were to buy that many pills from Boots, it would cost more than the gross domestic product of the UK. It’s more than the gross domestic product of the entire world. Since the dawn of civilisation. If every human being since the beginning of time had saved every last penny, denarius and sea-shell, we would still have not saved-up enough to purchase a single arnica molecule from Boots.

Then the process of consuming enough pills to get that one molecule also boggles the mind. You can try imagining Wembley Stadium completely filled with people, all drinking pints of medicine at the rate of two an hour. For just one of these people to eventually consume one molecule, you would need a million Wembley Stadiums all at full capacity with people who have drinking pints constantly since the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Oh, and you’d need 737 million such Earths.

I have just purchased a packet of Boots-brand 84 arnica homeopathic 30C Pills for £5.09, which Boots proudly claim is only 6.1p per pill. Their in-store advice tells me that arnica is good for treating “bruising and injuries”, which gives the impression that this is a very cost-effective health-care option.
Unlike most medication, it didn’t list the actual dose of the active ingredient that each pill contains, so I checked the British Homeopathic Association website. On their website it nonchalantly states that to make a homeopathic remedy, they start with the active ingredient and then proceed to dilute it to 1 per cent concentration. Then they dilute that new solution again, so there is now only 0.01 per cent of the original ingredients. For my 30C pills this diluting is repeated thirty times, which means that the arnica is one part in a million billion billion billion billion billion billion.
The arnica is diluted so much that there is only one molecule of it per 7 million billion billion billion billion pills.
It’s hard to comprehend numbers that large. If you were to buy that many pills from Boots, it would cost more than the gross domestic product of the UK. It’s more than the gross domestic product of the entire world. Since the dawn of civilisation. If every human being since the beginning of time had saved every last penny, denarius and sea-shell, we would still have not saved-up enough to purchase a single arnica molecule from Boots.
Then the process of consuming enough pills to get that one molecule also boggles the mind. You can try imagining Wembley Stadium completely filled with people, all drinking pints of medicine at the rate of two an hour. For just one of these people to eventually consume one molecule, you would need a million Wembley Stadiums all at full capacity with people who have drinking pints constantly since the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Oh, and you’d need 737 million such Earths.

Dammit man, Hemant said to make the posts shorter but I can’t bloody help myself. I CAN’T leave out the 737 million Earths bit, I just can’t.

Save a sheep, love a llama. (No, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.)